


out beyond, there is a field

by juniordreamer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Character Death, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Leia Organa Dies, Loss of Virginity, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Space Virgins, but nobody else does!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-10 04:56:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18931699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniordreamer/pseuds/juniordreamer
Summary: “The First Order thinks you’re dead.”It spilled from her in a rush, desperate and eager.He blinked, lips tipping up into something that was almost a smile.“Yes,” he said.  “I imagine they do.”Rey wanted to ask why, to ask every one of the thousands of questions that had been tumbling around in her mind since that fateful night on the Supremacy.  Maybe even from before then, when they were strangers in a forest.  When they were rivals in the snow.But there wasn’t time.  The bond shimmered between them, growing hazy and unclear.Rey leaned forward, panic slipping from her chest down into her fingertips.He leaned in too, meeting her in the middle.“Tell me where you are,” she said, words ghosting along his face.“I’ll meet you there.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So uh, did everyone survive the Vanity Fair photo shoot? I'm not sure I did. 
> 
> Please enjoy this post TLJ, pre TRoS canonverse fic I've been working on for way too long. It's complete (shocking, I know), so updates will be quick!

 

Out beyond ideas

of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

-Rumi

 

In the days after the Battle of Crait, the Resistance waited.  The survivors—a dozen souls scattered throughout the rusted core of the Millennium Falcon—kept watchful eyes on the black expanse of space that surrounded them, certain that it was only a matter of time before a First Order warship appeared from hyperspace to snuff the last of them out.

But none ever did. 

By some strange miracle, they were allowed to complete their journey to the Outer Rim unharmed and unimpeded.  They arrived as refugees in desperate need of food, water, shelter, protection, _hope_ —the most basic of which they were provided by the allies they found there.  They slept as a group on worn cots in a darkened bunker.  They ate their carefully portioned rations by the warmth of a perpetually burning fire, the smell of smoke clinging to their skin and to their clothes. 

And still, they waited.

For the fiery glow of a Dreadnought cannon.  Or an army of Stormtroopers.  Or perhaps the Supreme Leader himself, the blade of his saber a cruel blaze of light in the dark. 

But none came. 

Poe said the First Order was biding their time.  Waiting for the Resistance to contact their remaining allies so they could destroy them all in one go. 

Finn was certain the brief impasse was a ruse, a cruel trick meant to torture them into impulsivity, irrationality. 

Rose wondered if perhaps the Order had exerted too many of their resources on Crait and could no longer afford to pursue what was now a small and insignificant band of rebels across the galaxy.  

Leia listened to each of their ideas with equal patience and consideration.  But in truth, she was just as surprised by their continued survival as the rest of them.

Rey had no theories to offer.  She thought of the man she thought she knew and all of the roles he had come to fill in the short time since she left her life of desert sand behind.  He had been a stalking creature and a fearsome enemy.  But he had also been a surprising comfort.  A partner.  An equal. 

Which of these he was now, she did not know. 

At night, when the sound of the others’ quiet breathing filled the bunker like a whisper, she pressed into the place in her mind where she felt him still, hoping for answers. 

None came.

The bond still pulsed between them.  She could feel it, like a bruise on her soul, a wound not yet healed.  But it remained quiet.

Hours passed.  Days.  Weeks. 

They grew restless.  Starved for information that never came, their allies unable—or perhaps unwilling—to share what they knew of the First Order’s movements.  And who could blame them?  They had seen what would come from defiance.  They had seen what the Resistance had been reduced to.  A general with no army, a Jedi with no saber, a pilot with no ship—a collection of orphans and misfits with no place in the galaxy that they had once sacrificed everything to protect.

\--

The Outer Rim territory where they sought shelter was marked by the tallest trees Rey had ever seen.  They stretched to the heavens, their roots extending in spiraled knots that left the ground rutted and uneven.  The Falcon lay dormant in a small clearing of those trees, their colored leaves and branches offering respite from the sun that blazed overhead.

Rey found herself there often, buried in the hull of the ship, sweat and grease marking her face as she worked to undo yet another of Unkar Plutt’s misguided modifications.  She craved the quiet calm of those moments—the worry she felt for the fate of her friends and the galaxy momentarily forgotten in the soothing familiarity of the ship’s mechanical core.

But still the questions scratched at her mind.  What was the First Order waiting for?  Why were they still alive?  How many other planets would fall before the regime cemented its control?   

She crossed her legs and closed her eyes and _reached out_ as she had been taught to do, desperate for guidance.

Her pleas went unanswered.  The Force remained quiet.

\--

More than two months had passed since the rebels left Crait when Rey awoke to screams.  She knew, as she rose from her cot and walked through the dim of the bunker toward the chaos, that Leia was gone.  She felt it with a dreadful certainty even before she made it to where Poe knelt in silent tears by her bed.  Her face was peaceful and Rey felt her in the Force, content to leave this world of war behind, to be reunited with the father she never knew and the brother she couldn’t save.

Rey clasped hands with Finn and with Rose and allowed herself to feel the grief of losing their leader, and the gratitude for having known her. 

Through the haze of her sorrow, Rey felt a stirring—a crack in the bond.  And she understood with a strange clarity that the tears that fell from her eyes were not entirely her own.

Somewhere in the galaxy, a boy with dark eyes felt the loss of his mother and mourned her as the others did. 

\--

Things changed after that.

Leia had been content to wait, to let the passing of time close their wounds and fortify their spirits.  This was not her first battle, nor her first retreat, and the span of her years had granted her patience the others did not yet possess.  

In her absence, the survivors left one by one, bartering their way to other territories in the Rim, the Rebel insignia stripped from their jackets in exchange for the guarantee of safe transport, for another chance at survival.

They left in a steady stream, night after night, until only a handful of them remained.  Poe.  Finn.  Rose.  Chewie.  The droids.  And Rey.

They looked to her—the last Jedi—for guidance. She hardened herself with a strength she did not feel and led them aboard the Falcon.  The time had come for them to leave the safety of the Outer Rim. 

They needed answers.  They needed to know the fate of the galaxy. 

\--

For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, Rey set the Falcon on a course to Chandrila.  It was a Core planet and the former capital of the New Republic, which posed its risks, but after weeks of inaction, it was one she was willing to take.  And in a world on the brink of control by the First Order, it seemed no less dangerous than any other planet in the galaxy.

It was foolish not to trade the Falcon for another unmarked ship, but the Order’s hesitation had made them bold.  And in the midst of everything they had lost, Rey couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it behind.  It contained too many memories of Han and the family he once had to be condemned to an Outer Rim junkyard.  

And so when they landed in an open field cut by a rolling stream, it was with shields up and weapons drawn, certain they would be detected and pursued.  But somehow, they weren’t.  They stepped from the ship and out into the world and breathed in their gratitude at having survived another day.

As they donned hooded cloaks and began their journey to Hanna City, Rey felt the force vibrate within her, stronger than she had felt it in weeks.

Finally awake.

\--

Buildings lined the crowded streets of the city on either side, so tall they seemed to brush against the sky.  It made Rey feel strange, like there wasn’t quite enough space to push air into her lungs.  She kept her eyes trained forward and focused her concentration on the thrum of the Force that pulsed through her veins, ebbing and flowing as they wound their way through alleys and side streets. 

Poe and Finn took no notice, their hands fisted against their thighs as they walked, ready to pull blasters from holsters strapped to their side at the first sign of trouble.  Rose took her hand in hers, giving it a little squeeze before dropping it back down, and Rey breathed easier after that. 

In truth, Rey didn’t know where they were going or what they were looking for.  She only knew that the Force called to her there, beckoning her toward a path it seemed she had no choice but to follow.  The others followed without hesitation and their faith warmed the blood in her veins, making her braver than she was. 

\--

Night fell on Hanna City like a whisper and the horizon that had been painted in streaks of red and blue quickly fell to darkened grey illuminated by stars and speeders.  With it came the rain, fast and cold, drenching them in an instant. 

They sought refuge in a thumping tavern, grateful for the warmth that spread from a fire at the center of the place.  They warmed their hands and dried their cloaks and tried not to think of the bunker or the things they had lost there.  

Rey palmed the blaster by her side, wishing with every breath that it was a saber—the fractured pieces carefully stored in the pack slung around her shoulder.  How long had it been since the pull of a force divided had severed it in two?  How long since she awoke in a burning room scattered with broken bodies and said goodbye to the only one still left breathing on the floor?  How long since she felt the weight of him in her mind?

If she closed her eyes, if she let her mind wander down that strange span of time, she thought she could count every evolution of every sun and every moon. 

She could count every second. 

\--

The tavern was loud, filled with the sound of men spurred on by the burn of each drink and the unnamed energy that flows from whiskey-warmed blood.  It reminded Rey of the shadowy places scattered throughout Niima Outpost—places she was careful to avoid after dark.  Still, it was easy for the rebels to lose themselves in it, to make themselves invisible among the shadows.

Already they’d been on the planet for too long, each second bringing them closer to what seemed an inevitably disastrous conclusion.  And though they would never say it out loud, Rey could sense the way her friends were anxious to leave this place and return to the safety of the Falcon.  She felt it the same as they did, a slow creeping panic crawling up her spine, urging her to run. 

Time passed and the men grew louder and Rey began to think that maybe she was wrong.  Maybe the Force didn’t call to her there, maybe there was nothing for her to find.

But then she heard it—the whisper of a secret shared between strangers.  It carried through the din of the bar and landed at her side.

She followed the whisper through the crowd like a dire-cat hunting a trail of blood until she found its source—a pair of men, glassy-eyed and leering, half a dozen bottles scattered between them.  Rey harnessed the power she knew lived within her and compelled them to tell her all that they knew. 

They said that the First Order had seized most of the Mid Rim.  That Kashyyyk and Nakadia were expected to fall within the next week.  They said the regime would soon move on to the Core Worlds.  That many of them, Chandrila included, were planning to surrender in an effort to protect their citizens from the cruel violence that tore the Hosnian system from the sky.

Their words, slurred from drink and the pull of the Force on their minds, worked to fill the gaps in a story that seemed as old as time itself.  The story of war and death and a search for power that would one day fall to the hands of another—an endless cycle, a never-ending exchange. 

Rey knew they needed to leave.  That whatever miracle had kept them hidden since they arrived would soon end and they would be seen for what they truly were—enemies of the state, rebels who refused to surrender.  But the Force hummed within her, hungry for more.

She steeled her spine and asked of the Supreme Leader, the shape of his chosen name odd on her tongue. 

“Kylo Ren?” they repeated dumbly.  “Kylo Ren is dead.”

A cold splinter of rage tore down Rey’s spine at their words.  She clenched her fists and bared her teeth and she was no less the dire-cat, out for the blood of men who dared tell lies to the last of the Jedi.  

But when she pressed further into their minds, vicious and unrelenting, she saw the truth as they knew it to be. 

Kylo Ren, usurped by a top general and other high-ranking members of his own regime.  Kylo Ren, a traitor and a fool who paid for his crimes with his death, as would any other man who dared betray their loyalties to the First Order. 

Rey saw his face as the men had seen it—broken and bloody, broadcast across the galaxy as a trophy and a threat. 

_This is what we’ve done to the Jedi Killer—son of Leia and blood of Vader_ , the image of him said.  _Just imagine what we will do to you._

\--

Rey retreated from their minds and fled from the bar and into the street, now dark and nearly deserted from the rain that still pounded at the pavement.  She took a shuddering breath but no air seemed to fill her lungs.  She felt the hot slip of tears mingle with the cold stream of rain that fell on her face and the burn felt icy hot on her skin.

The men’s words echoed in her mind, cruel and taunting, and she felt the anger and the hurt rising up in her veins.  She let it build, cresting like a wave on Ahch-To’s shore, untamed and violent, and just when she thought the force of it might pull her under, she grabbed hold of it and focused it all on the place in her mind that wasn’t entirely her own. 

The place she had shared with him. 

The place where she felt him still.

It crackled, brighter than lightning, more powerful than a desert storm, and she focused and she pushed and she raged until she thought she might collapse from the effort. 

Then the sounds of the world around her fell away, dampened by the thrumming pulse of the Force that tied her, unbidden, to another soul.

For the first time in months, the bond that connected them opened fully.  And through it came a voice she often heard in dreams. 

“ _Rey._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

She opened her eyes and he was there with her in the rain, dark and resigned—like a ghost, but solid.  He stepped toward her, one hand raised in a gesture of peace and surrender.

_“Ben.”_

He closed the distance between them in the span of a single breath, crowding her senses with his presence.  She drank him in—his blackened armor, the shadows that rimmed his eyes, the slope of the scar she had marked him with, and another, fresher scar slicing down his temple.

Somehow, though his physical form likely stood lightyears from this planet, his palm came to rest on her cheek.  She felt it through the Force as a shifting of energy, but the touch against her cheek was solid and warm and undoubtedly _real._ It felt to her like a question.  It branded her skin like a plea.  

She closed her eyes against his embrace and felt him fall back through the Force. 

She opened them once more and he was gone. 

\--

Finn found her in the street, drenched and shivering and alone.  They gathered the others and fled to the comfort of the Falcon.  There, she explained as best she could what she had learned, even if she didn’t yet understand it herself. 

They each had questions—about the Order and the war and _Kylo Ren_ , the name a curse on their lips—but Rey’s mind felt adrift in a raging sea, the Force a wildfire razing through her veins.  She couldn’t find words to explain, didn’t have answers that would satisfy.

She bade them to bed with promises of tomorrow, needing desperately to be alone with the weight of what she had discovered in the city.

The lights on the Falcon dimmed and soon the air was filled with their whispered breaths—her friends, her allies. 

The very last of the rebellion.

\--

Rey sat in the shadow of the ship—legs crossed, eyes closed.  She breathed the cool, clean air that fell on Chandrila, the lingering moisture clinging to her hair, her cheeks, the exposed slope of her shoulder.  She listened to the hum of nature’s melody, punctuated with the unfamiliar cries of creatures that lived by the light of the stars.  Hours passed, marked only by the progression of the planet’s moon in the night sky. 

And she waited.  For the benevolence of the Force.  For the opening of the bond. 

It came as a quiet rush.  One moment, she was alone in the field.  And in the next, he was there beside her.  As if he always had been.  As if he always would be.

His long legs were crossed as hers were and when she turned to face him, the tips of their knees pressed gently against one another and down into the dirt.  Rey was no longer surprised by the solid permanence that somehow extended through the bond, but the contact burned all the same.

She raised her eyes to his, dark orbs that shone as bright as the oldest star in the galaxy, and felt his soul call out to her. 

She breathed through fear and doubt and anger and felt her own call back.

There were so many things she wished she could say, things she had pressed into the bond even when it refused to open and she was left alone on her side of it.  How she hated leaving him alone in a room they had burned together, how she hated him for asking her to make an impossible choice, how it hurt to see him command an army that wished her dead.

But it stuck in her throat—all of it, trapped under her tongue as she felt him through the Force.  She caught glimpses of his own emotions, glimmers of thoughts that mirrored her own—panic and desperation, anger and betrayal.  Sorrow and isolation. 

Hunger.

She wanted desperately to touch him, to reach out and feel him solid beneath her hand.  She wondered if he was warm, if the half healed cut on his lip caused him pain.  If she could sooth it with her touch.

But there wasn’t time.  They knew it as surely as they knew the sun would rise in the morning, would set again in the night.

He spoke first, his voice pitched low as thunder.

“Where are you?”

Rey thought of the friends sleeping at her back and wondered if she should lie.  But something in his voice told her not to be afraid.  To trust, as impossible as it seemed.  

“Chandrila,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper.

He nodded once, drew in a single shaky breath.

“You’re safe there for a few days, a week at most.  But you’ll need to get off world soon.  Somewhere in the Outer Rim.”

He said it like it was important, like it was the most important thing that she should know this. 

She opened her mouth to sooth his concern, to confirm they didn’t plan on staying any longer than they needed, but something else slipped from her lips instead.

“The First Order thinks you’re dead.”

It spilled from her in a rush, desperate and eager.

He blinked, lips tipping up into something that was almost a smile.

“Yes,” he said.  “I imagine they do.”

Rey wanted to ask why, to ask every one of the thousands of questions that had been tumbling around in her mind since that fateful night on the Supremacy.  Maybe even from before then, when they were strangers in a forest.  When they were rivals in the snow.

But there wasn’t time.  The bond shimmered between them, growing hazy and unclear.

Rey leaned forward, panic slipping from her chest down into her fingertips. 

He leaned in too, meeting her in the middle. 

“Tell me where you are,” she said, words ghosting along his face. 

“ _I’ll meet you there_.”

\--

The coordinates laid beyond the edge of every map in the Falcon’s navigational system.

“He’s in the Unknown Regions.”  Finn spat around the words as if they burned his tongue.  “Unmarked territory.”

“There’s no way of knowing what’s out there, Rey,” Poe added, dark brows drawn into a tight line.  “These navs will get you to the edge of the Outer Rim, but after that you’ll be flying blind.”

Both men turned to face her, arms folded and features arranged in mirrored expressions of doubt.

“It’s suicide, Rey.  What you’re doing—if you go to him, if you even _make_ it to him.  It’s suicide.”

Finn’s face, usually so open and kind, was twisted in anger that cut deep into her bones.

She’d tried to explain, but he couldn’t seem to understand. 

Still, she tried again, searching desperately for the right thing to say.  To make him see what she saw, to make him know what she knew.

“I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t safe.  Please Finn, you have to trust me.”

“Rey knows what she’s doing,” Rose cut in, one gentle hand resting on Finn’s shoulder.  “If she thinks this is best, then—”

“—He’s a murderer.”

The word seemed to suck the air from the ship.  It left Rey unbalanced and empty.

He wasn’t wrong, she knew.  But it was the smallest part of a larger truth that only she seemed to be able to recognize.

She breathed, forced air into all the empty spaces she felt inside her, and spoke. 

“So am I.  And so are you.  So is almost everyone we know.  That’s what war is, Finn.  But I have to do this.  What other choice do we have at this point?”

“We can recruit!”  Finn shouted, unmoved by her plea.  “We can spread Leia’s message throughout the galaxy until we have an army and then we can crush the First Order the way they deserve to be crushed.”

His words were spoken with such conviction, such blind hope that Rey nearly believed them herself.  But she knew the truth.  Deep within herself, she felt it.

“It’s too late for that, Finn.  I’m sorry.  This is the only way.”

\--

She left at sunset, Leia’s homing beacon pinging softly at her side.  It was the closest thing to a compromise they could manage.  The anger had leeched from Finn as he’d wrapped it around her wrist, replaced by a somber acceptance that was somehow even worse. 

“Come home,” he had told her.  “Come home or we’ll come find you.”

Rey shifted the controls of the ship she’d managed to commandeer and flew into the burning sky. 

\--

The endless black of space seemed darker without her friends there to guide her through it.  Jakku had burned the sun into her soul and even if she sometimes hated the blaze, her skin yearned for warmth.  Her eyes searched for light.

Fear crawled up her spine, old and familiar, as she followed the ship’s navigational system to the edge of the Outer Rim.  She’d forgotten, somehow, how it felt to be alone.  She swallowed it down, contained the ache until it was small enough to store at the back of her mind, where she could forget it.  Just until she made it through the darkness.  Just until she made it back to them. 

The nav systems failed somewhere past Rakata Prime.  Rey switched it off in exchange for the crude, hand drawn map Poe had managed to make for her.  It wasn’t exact, not by a long shot, but it was better than blindness.  She followed it until she reached the edge and then she closed her eyes, reaching out through the Force. 

At first, there was nothing but her own force signature beating steadily in the endless expanse of space.  Alone.

Then, just on the edge of her grasp, she felt something else.  A wild energy, burning as bright as the sun against the back of her eyelids. 

It beat in time with her own, pulsing like the blood in her veins, spiraling through time and space to connect with her chest.

She greeted it like an old friend and followed it through the darkness.

\--

The planet’s climate was unlike any Rey had ever seen.  It wasn’t dry like Jakku, wasn’t cold like Starkiller.  The trees reminded her a bit of the ones on Takodana—they were similarly tall and green, but lush beyond anything Rey had ever seen, with flowers of every color dotting along the branches and strange creatures hiding just beneath the leaves.

Moisture clung to the air, so thick it choked her when she stepped from the ship and breathed in her first lungful.  Already the hair not contained by her usual three buns began to curl around her temples as sweat beaded along her spine.

There was so much color—deep greens and bright pinks and everything in between.  Her eyes feasted on it, taking in as much as they could bear after so long in the dark.

She moved through the trees, deeper and deeper until they parted to a field.  There, just beyond the horizon, she saw it.  A shelter in the distance, made from braided leaves and strung between branches that swayed with the breeze that blew in from the west.

Her pulse quickened. 

He was there.  She could feel it.

\--

Her steps were light upon the ground, boots sinking into the soft dirt that lay beneath her feet.  She made almost no sound, her movements easily blending in with the strange buzzes and low pitched cries of the creatures that were careful to stay just outside her line of vision. 

Still, he must have heard her.  Or perhaps he sensed her, the same way she felt him so clearly in the Force, because when she pushed her way through the dense leaves to the clearing where his shelter lay, he already stood there waiting for her.

Rey’s breath caught in her throat.  She’d forgotten how tall he was.  How formidable.  How easily he could harm her without a saber or a staff gripped in her hands for defense.   

She wondered again if this was a mistake, a clever rouse she had been just fool enough to fall for.  But as she drew nearer, she felt his Force signature strengthen.  Beneath it was his pulse, beating as wildly as her own. 

She wasn’t afraid, she realized.  But then, she never really was with him.  Not the way she should have been.   

He was dressed in just his leggings and tunic, the heavy armor and cloak shed in exchange for the natural warmth that spread through the planet’s atmosphere.

He stared at her, as she crossed the tree line and through the threshold to his camp.  He was so still she thought for a moment that maybe he wasn’t real.  Perhaps she’d dreamed him up, a solid form borne of desperation. 

Then he moved.  Only to breathe, his chest rising and falling with forced control.  But he moved.  He was real.

There were so many things Rey should have said, so many important exchanges they should have had.  After all, the fate of the galaxy rested on what happened next.

But she couldn’t deny the temptation any longer.  She couldn’t deny herself the way she used to with such practiced ease.  It was a need more primal than hunger that spurred her on, a desire more desperate than the worst thirst. 

It made her reckless, foolish.  It tore the thoughts from her mind and crept through her blood, down to her fingertips.

Before she could think, before he could move again, she reached out.  And she touched him.  

\--

_Warm._

It was the only thought in her mind, the only thing she knew. 

He was warm, so warm beneath her fingers.  It radiated from his chest and slid across her skin, making her warm too. 

His heart beat wildly in his chest, but his hands were steady as they rose to stroke down her shoulders.  His fingers brushed against the scar that marked her there and a breath escaped her parted lips at the contact.

“Rey,” he whispered, still staring down at her.

Her name on his lips felt sacred.  A prayer delivered, a promise exchanged.   

She answered with her own.

“ _Ben_.”

His lips crashed against hers, his usual control lost to the wild thrum of the Force beating steadily around them.  She met him with equal fire, naïve and unsure, but guided by instinct.

He couldn’t kiss her fast enough, hard enough.  His lips moved from her mouth to her cheeks, down her throat and back up again.  His movements were frantic, hurried.  Like he was afraid she would disappear, fall back through the bond before he had his fill of her.

Rey laced her fingers through his hair, meeting his kisses with slower, languid ones of her own. 

_I’m here,_ she thought through the bond.  _I’m here and I’m not going anywhere._

Ben breathed then, slowed his hands so that they dipped along her waist, sliding around the curve of her breast before coming to rest on her cheek.

He kissed her again, slower and sweeter.  Taking time to feel her solid against him.

Rey met him at every step, sliding her tongue against the seam of his lips until he let her in.

She was lost in his warmth, so lost she didn’t realize they were moving until they were falling back through the opening to his shelter.  He laid her down on the soft earth, caging her in with his body until he was all she could see.  That, and the little shafts of light streaming in through the gaps in the braided leaves, bathing them in light and shadow.

Rey reached for him, grasping at his tunic with her fingers, pushing it further up his chest.  She laughed a little when it got caught around his head, forcing him to reach up to finish the job himself, but it stuck in her throat when she saw what laid underneath.

His torso was covered with half healed cuts and bruises, dark things that roiled under his skin like clouds before a storm.

Rey gasped, tried to sit up, to see his injuries up close.  But he stilled her with one hand pressed gently against her chest. 

“I’m alright, Rey.  I swear it.”

And then he kissed her again, dipping his tongue into her mouth with more practiced ease than even moments before. 

Rey let him taste her, let him consume her until she was breathless and panting, aching for air she didn’t want if it meant pulling away from him. 

But there was something else too, a slow burn in her belly that she didn’t quite understand.  It pulsed and throbbed, the heat coiling its way through her insides until she thought she might combust from it.  Until she thought it would turn her to ash.

She bucked her hips against Ben’s, searching desperately for something to sooth the burn.  She rocked against him, her center finding the hardness between his legs and they both gasped at the contact.

“Ben,” she whispered, the word tipped up like a question.  And even if she didn’t fully know what she was asking for, he seemed to understand because he pressed his lips against her jaw and whispered soothing words in her ear.

“I’m here,” he breathed against her temple.  “I’ve got you now.”

His hands shook as he pushed them under her tunic.  Rey leaned into his touch, reveling in the way his fingertips scraped against her ribs and then the underside of her breasts.  He dipped below her breast band, pulling it with her tunic until she was bared to him. 

Her nipples hardened under his stare and he licked his lips, reminding Rey of a loth-wolf.  She fought the urge to cover her chest, focusing instead on his eyes and the hungry glint she saw there. 

He dipped his head to lave his tongue against her flesh, reddening the skin and making her writhe. 

“Perfect,” he murmured, his breath cool against her slickened skin.  “So perfect.”  

Rey couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips as he scraped his teeth along first one nipple and then the other.  He smirked against her breast and did it again, slower and harder. 

The sensation danced on the edge of pleasure and pain and Rey bucked her hips again.  Ben met her thrusts with his own and he hissed as she rolled against him, the damp center of her leggings clinging closely to her thighs.

Ben sat up just enough to roll them down her legs, choking a bit as his fingers brushed against her soft curls.  Rey watched with interest as he pulled his own down too, revealing the hardness she had felt so clearly between her legs just moments before.

It was long and thick and weeping at the top and before she could stop herself, she reached out and grasped it in her hand.  It was both soft and hard, smooth and ridged and she marveled at how her fingers barely closed around it. 

She moved them, just a little up and down, and the sound that tore from Ben’s throat was barely human. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, hands dropping to the earth by her side.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Ben nearly laughed, leaning forward again to kiss her lips before whispering, “It’s good, Rey.  It’s so good.”  He paused, dark eyes blazing in the dim of the shelter.  “Let me show you.”

Before Rey could ask what he meant, he started trailing his hand down her body, stopping only when he met the apex of her thighs.  He cupped her, warm palm resting easily against her flesh and even this made her heart jump in her chest.  He used a single finger to part her and she jumped again, suddenly understanding there were things in the world she didn’t yet know to ask for.  Things he would give her anyway.

Rey felt wetness pooling between her thighs and Ben ran his finger through it again and again.  Every time he reached the top of her flesh, she shuddered and cried out. 

“This is what you did to me, Rey,” Ben whispered against her ear.  “Isn’t it good?”

Rey barely managed to nod.  Her body felt coiled and tensed, desperate for release.  But he was right, it was good.  So much better than anything she’d ever had before.  

Ben shifted his hand lower, carefully positioning a single finger at her entrance.  She gasped and stared up at him, wide eyed and unsure.

“This will be good too,” he murmured soothingly and Rey nodded again.

His finger was slick from her and he slid in easily, a little bit at a time, giving her time to adjust.  Rey breathed as he sank in fully, her walls clenching and shuddering around him.

It was different from the other feeling.  It wasn’t individual spikes of pleasure, but instead a continuous wave that built and built and left her wanting more.

“Please,” she found herself saying, eyes half lidded and skin slick with sweat.  “Please, Ben.”

He withdrew his hand from her core and the feeling of emptiness was so overwhelming she nearly cried out.  But he was there again, running his fingers across her neck and over her breasts, leaving promises wherever he touched her.

He shifted slightly, nudging her knees until there was room for him to crawl between.  Rey watched as he took himself in hand, lined up with her entrance, and began to push in.

The stretch made her gasp.  She didn’t know how it could fit, was suddenly afraid that it wouldn’t.  But Ben took his time, leaning down to kiss her, to run his tongue across her breasts and up her jaw until he sank into the hilt.

He stilled for a moment, his eyes locked onto hers as she clenched around him. 

She felt—not just full, but whole.  Complete.

And then he moved, pulling out inch by inch before edging his way back in again.  Rey cried out, pressure quickly building inside her.  He slid out and in, again and again and it was all she could do to cling to him, fingers digging into his shoulders and scraping down his chest.

Ben’s breath came fast and stuttered above her.  His hands shook where they touched her face before curling gently around her neck.  A pretty flush stained his skin, from the width of his chest to the tip of his ears and when Rey cast her eyes to the point where their bodies met, she found that this part of him was reddened too.

She watched him enter her with slow, even strokes.  She marveled how her body stretched to fit him, how it moved to meet his thrusts.   

She’d heard stories on the lips of leering men at the Outpost, had seen the holos left behind in the skeletons of star destroyers.  But she didn’t know it could be like _this._ Both animal and human, desperate and kind. 

His Force signature licked across hers and she caught little glimpses of his mind, roiling with so many thoughts and emotions it was impossible to isolate them, to see each one for what it was.  Still, Rey thought she understood. 

The kiss to her lips felt like remorse.  His teeth scraping against her neck was the sting of betrayal.  The hand at her throat, gently tensing around her neck—that was possession. 

She delighted in each one, in the way he stared down at her—lips bruised and parted as he continued to move within her. 

She felt close to an edge, teetering on the brink of something she didn’t recognize and when Ben’s hand found the point between her thighs again, she came that much closer. 

The pleasure felt wild and endless, an ocean of flames lapping at her blood—warming it then cooling it, making it flow like magma found beneath the crust of the earth.  Rey held her breath, suddenly afraid of what laid beyond the edge of the precipice her body was hurtling toward, but Ben cupped her cheek, fingers roaming to part her lips.

“Let go,” he urged, voice low beside her ear. 

“Let go,” he said again, this time against her lips.

And so she did, breathing air into her lungs just as the pressure at her core released, sending wave after wave crashing through her until her body was light and limbless.

Ben watched her through it all, his eyes never leaving hers.  And just as she reached the end, he fell too, hips stuttering against her as he found his own release.

His chest pounded against hers and she felt him in the Force, more present than she ever had before.  They were connected in all things now, in every dimension.

Ben pressed soft kisses to her lips once more before gently sliding out of her.  He pulled her down to him, cradling her to his chest so that she could hear every beat of his heart.

It was so loud against her ear.  An undeniable presence.

As they drifted to sleep, Rey thought how she didn’t know there were things still left in the world that were only good and pure.

Being with Ben was one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://tumblr.juniordreamer.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/juniordreamer2). Come say hello!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How am I already thirsty for new content? Vanity Fair spoiled me. 
> 
> Love you all <3

They slept beneath the leaves of the shelter, bodies pressed against each other and the dirt.

When they woke, it was to darkness, the planet’s sun long since set in exchange for the moon in the night sky.

Rey shivered and Ben pulled her closer, caging her in with his body so that she was wrapped up in him.  She didn’t understand how he was always so warm, but her body welcomed it, happily sharing in whatever his was willing to offer.

Even in the darkness, Rey could see the bruises that covered his torso and her mouth set in a line as she looked at them.  There were so many.  More than she could count, even as she worked to trail her fingers around the edge of each one.  He hissed when she passed over a particularly deep gash beneath his ribs and Rey stilled, eyes finding his in the darkness. 

There was a sudden tension between them that wasn’t there before, made of all the things they hadn’t yet said.

It sat like a pot of water left in the eye of the sun, simmering and spitting and threatening to boil over. 

Rey made herself pull away from him then, drawing his cloak from where it was piled on the floor of the shelter and drawing it loosely around her shoulders.

He watched her as she moved, his face a mask she couldn’t seem to penetrate, and when she was safely tucked against the leaves, he drew his body up too. 

He made no move to cover his own nakedness, his pale skin glowing bright as a star in the darkness, muscles rippling as he breathed one careful breath after another.

They sat for a moment in the silence, feeling each other through the Force.  There was so much left unsaid between them and for a second, Rey wanted to forget it all, to live forever in the quiet of the shelter with only Ben to warm her skin.

Then she thought of Finn and Rose and Chewie and the others she had left behind and she knew, with a terrible sadness welling up in her chest, that they couldn’t stay like this forever.

“What happened after Crait?” she asked, forcing a steadiness she didn’t feel into her voice.

He seemed to consider her words, tumbling them around in his mind as he searched for an adequate answer.  His throat worked and his jaw tensed, but he was still beyond that.  A statue that breathed, with blood that pulsed.   

“I—,” he began, then paused.  “I was so angry.” 

He stopped again and Rey felt a shadow spread through the bond—an echo of what he must have felt then.  A terrible rage, roiling and uncontrolled. 

“It’s like I had a fever,” he said.  “And it was scorching me from the inside, burning everything—everything I thought I knew.  Until that’s all that I was.  Just fire and ash.”

His fingers flinched, tightening into fists and then loosening one by one until they laid flat and tense across his thigh.

“I was out of my mind.  Without Snoke and without—without you.”  He seemed to stumble then, over words and memories he wasn’t quite ready to face.  “It was so quiet.  My mind had never been so quiet before.”

This Rey understood.  She’d spent her life in the quiet, speaking only to the sun and the sand and the creatures she sometimes found in the skeletons of star destroyers, and still it didn’t compare to the silence that spread from the place she once heard him so clearly.

“I tried so hard to get to you.  To make the bond work the way it did before.  But I was afraid—I thought if Snoke created it, then maybe it died with him.  That I wouldn’t be able to find you without him.”

Rey shook her head, color rising on her cheeks at the sound of Snoke’s name.  A monster who bred monsters, a coward who fed on the mind of a boy, planting seeds that would grow as he did. 

“The bond is ours,” she said fiercely.  “Even if he created it.  We took it and we made it our own.  He can’t take that from you.”

Ben nodded, though he seemed far away, and Rey edged just a bit closer to him.

“I tried to find you,” she whispered.  “Every night.”

He nodded again, damp hair falling into his eyes as he looked at her.

“What happened next?” Rey made herself ask.

“The Order had your location, knew exactly where you were hiding in the Rim.  They wanted to advance immediately, to ensure you wouldn’t have an opportunity to rally forces or recruit new troops, but I wouldn’t approve the mission.  I said it wasn’t necessary, that we needed to narrow our focus to the Mid Rim.  Work our way in, then work our way out again.”

Rey peered at him through the darkness, head tilted slightly to the side.  “We thought it was strange that no one came for us.  We didn’t know what it meant.”

A grim smile appeared on Ben’s face at her words.  “Yes, Hux thought it was strange too.  The takeover of Aleen and Crul distracted him for a while, but he undoubtedly had _concerns_ regarding my reluctance to pursue you.”

Rey thought back to those first days with the Resistance, when they had nothing but the clothes on their back.  When they waited for death, certain that each breath they took would be their last.

Rey hadn’t dared to hope then, hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility that he might protect them.  But listening to his words now, she realized the belief had come to live inside her anyway.  Like a star in the darkness, dim but refusing to go out.

“And then?” she pressed.

Ben paused, drawing breath into his lungs before speaking.  “And then, my mother—”

He struggled on the word, like it came from a language he’d forgotten, or perhaps had never learned. 

“I felt her die,” he continued, voice raw and hands clenched again.  “It was like a star went out.  I felt it in my chest, like my ribs had cracked open.  I saw her, through you, and I—I lost my mind again.”  

Rey’s throat tightened at the memory of Leia, the grief she felt at having lost her, the shared sorrow that extended through the bond.  She moved again across the floor of the shelter, drawing as close to him as she dared, close enough to feel the warmth emanating from his body, but still just out of reach.

“I destroyed everything,” he said lowly, as if to himself.  “Half their ships, all the files, every scrap of data they had on you, the Resistance, my mother.  All of it.  And I left.”

Rey looked again at the bruises marring his skin and she sighed, somehow knowing what happened next without him having to tell her.

“They found you,” she said.  “Didn’t they?”

“Yes.  Almost immediately.  The wreckage was unbelievable.  My TIE was destroyed.  I should have died.  I—” he swallowed.  “I think I might have, for a moment.  But the Force…” he drifted off, unable to find the words.

Rey placed a single palm against his knee, suddenly understanding.  “It healed you.”

He looked down at his hands, throat working with all the things he couldn’t say.

“Ben,” she tried again, raising up on her knees and taking his face in her palms until he met her eyes.  “It healed you.”

His eyes shone bright as he released the air from his lungs.  “Yes,” he answered.  “I think it did.”

Rey pressed a kiss to each of his cheeks, no longer able to resist the pull to his skin.  He tilted his head as she moved to pull away, catching her lips with his.

He kissed her softly, chastely.  Warm and unhurried.  And when he pulled away, Rey met his eyes again.

“You'll come back with me,” she said.  Not a question.  Not a request.  Just a simple depiction of a truth she already felt deep within her.   

Still, he answered anyway. 

“Yes.”  A kiss to her forehead. 

“Yes.”  A kiss to her lips.

_Yes._ A word pressed into the bond, felt rather than heard.  A promise. 

A vow.

\--

The next time they woke, it was to light.  It cut through the roof of the shelter, filtering down through the braided leaves to warm the air around them, leaving sweat to bead along their skin.

Rey’s eyes were closed against the sun and she felt adrift between worlds—the light and the dark, dreaming and consciousness.  The past.  The future.  But Ben was warm against her back, his length already rigid and hard against her thigh, and this tethered her to the waking world.  To the present.

The hand on her stomach crept to cup her breast, gently squeezing before moving to roll her nipple between calloused fingers.  Rey arched into it, eyes fluttering open to find the earth was just as they’d left it in sleep. 

Ben shifted against her back, lifting her leg to slide against her heat.  He slipped inside with a careful thrust, pushing until he was fully seated inside of her.  He stilled then, giving her time to adjust.  Rey clenched around him, still in awe of the way her body stretched to fit him.  A ragged breath was torn from his throat as she canted her hips to draw him out before pushing him back in again. 

“Rey,” he breathed against her ear, a growl that sent shivers across her flesh.  “Be still.”

It was a warning and a plea and Rey was tempted, so tempted to ignore it.  But Ben’s hands tightened where they gripped her hip and she tried, for once, to do as she was told.

They stayed still and silent for a moment, and then another, and when Rey thought she would die from the denial, he shifted once more and _finally_ began to move.  Slow, deep thrusts that stretched and burned.  It was overwhelming, the sense of being filled, of being _joined_ , Ben at her back, his breath in her ear. 

She couldn’t see his face this way, with her back pressed to his front, but she could feel him all the same.  His presence in the Force swelled and solidified as he continued to rock against her, whispering words from one mind to another.  Things like _wet_ and _warm_ and _fuck—_ all low and disjointed, sliding through the bond like sweat on skin.  Between them all was another word—her name, whispered again and again.  A chant, or maybe a prayer.

Rey wondered what words he might hear from her.  _Full_ , maybe.  Or just _more more more._

Because now that she had this, now that she had Ben, there was no going back.  She would take everything she could.  Without question and without regret.

Ben's thrusts grew faster, deeper, and she heard him through the bond once more.  _Take it so well.  So good.  Rey._ And she knew he understood.

This time, Rey chased the fire without fear, sliding her own fingers against her core to lick at the flames, to burn them stronger, higher. 

_Yes.  Yes._

The word echoed in her mind—whether hers or Ben's, she couldn’t say.  But it repeated over and over until the fire overtook her once more and she shuddered against Ben’s chest as he thrust into her a final time.

They laid together, hearts pounding, until the sweat on their skin began to cool.  Then they pulled themselves up from the dirt to greet the sun outside the shelter.

\--

They ate fruit from the planet’s trees, the juice dripping down their chins and staining their lips.  They drank water from the ground, where it streamed along the rocks, cold and clean.   

They spoke, in words and through the bond, revealing their wounds one at a time then working to stitch them closed.

They found answers to impossible questions, the ones they couldn’t bear to taste on their lips.  The ones that drifted through the bond anyway.  Like _why did you leave me?_ And _why did you make me choose?_

And when the sun set on the third day, Rey knew their time was drawing to an end.  The galaxy cried out to them.  They could no longer deny its call.

They didn’t speak of it, but Rey knew Ben sensed it too.  He took his time with her then, licking into her until her body shook and her muscles spasmed and the slick that dripped from her was enough to dampen the floor of the shelter, turning the dirt to softened mud. 

They were both drenched in sweat when he finally pulled her up from the ground and sheathed her on his hardness.  Rey’s legs wrapped around his waist, her weight resting on his knees as he rocked them.  So slowly, they barely moved at all. 

He caught her lips and she felt him through the Force—not fragments like before, but words spoken clearly.  Meant for her to take and echo with her own.

_Mine_ , he said.  _Then, now, always.  Mine._

Rey licked a bead of sweat that dripped down the slope of his neck before answering.

_Yes.  Yes, yours._    

\--

They left just before sunset, the sky no longer blue but red and purple and orange and yellow and all of the other colors Rey never thought she’d see when she was a scavenger in the desert.  She watched the planet disappear in pieces.  First, their shelter stolen by the glare of the sun.  Then the field.  Then the trees.  Then the earth itself.  Until there was only darkness left around them.

This time, she wasn’t afraid.

This time, she wasn’t alone.

\--

The homing beacon led them back through the Unknown Regions to an isolated planet in the Outer Rim.  She’d managed to send a message to the Falcon once they passed beyond Rakata Prime.  Just a few words.  _Safe.  Coming home.  Not alone._

Finn would understand their meaning, she knew.  But would he accept their intent?  Rey wasn’t sure.  She prayed to every god that ever lived and then to the Force itself that he would.

Ben grew still as they cut through the atmosphere, his hands curled into fists where they rested against his thighs.  She could sense his apprehension through the bond, his worry over what he knew must come next.  It made him seem young, like a child watching others play.  Always on the outside, never sure how to break his way in.

Rey placed her hand on his, pressed a simple kiss to his temple. 

“They’ll see,” she assured, breathing the belief into existence.  “I’ll make them see.”

He nodded once, offered a smile that was barely a smile at all, and steered them through the dust.

\--

They landed on a desert planet, at once both strange and familiar.  Sand whipped in the air, sticking to their skin and burrowing under their clothes as they stepped down from the ship to greet the others gathered just beside the landing pad.  

Ben hesitated for a moment, unsure of his place in this new world until Rey stepped back and took his hand in hers, pulling him forward, out of the shadow of the ship. 

They stood together, then.  A solider, a mechanic, a pilot, a Wookiee, a Jedi, a fallen knight.  The very last of the resistance.

_Is it enough?_ The thought passed, unbidden, through Rey’s mind.

_Yes,_ Ben answered, reaching for Finn’s outstretched hand. 

_It is enough._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My [tumblr](https://juniordreamer.tumblr.com), my [twitter](https://twitter.com/juniordreamer2). My DM's are open, always.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://juniordreamer.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/juniordreamer2) where I am literally STILL yelling about everything that happened yesterday.


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